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5th grade son struggling academically. Login/Join 
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This sounds really familiar. I tanked in school about this same time. I was bored to death. Why?
Like your kid, I was reading at a much higher level than the other kids. When given an assignment, I could finish it very quickly and then totally lost interest in what went on afterward.
I was lucky to graduate HS.


End of Earth: 2 Miles
Upper Peninsula: 4 Miles
 
Posts: 16005 | Location: Marquette MI | Registered: July 08, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Eye on the
Silver Lining
posted Hide Post
Focus on the F, show concern over the Cs, praise the B.

Perspective: He’s in 5th grade.
Does he have friends? How are they doing in class- similar grades, etc? Are they distracting him, or perhaps a girl Wink?

It sounds to me like you’re on this. You’re volunteering in class, you’re in touch with the teach, you’ve got him tutors. As long as you explain this to him in a kind way, that you’re going to bat for him, giving him everything he needs to succeed, the rest is up to him.

Is he frustrated by his poor grades? In tears because he’s trying and still doesn’t get it? Or just shrugging his shoulders and rolling it off because he genuinely doesn’t give a shit? His reaction to his own grades would point me in the direction of my next step. The first, I’d def get a professional opinion to help, the second, I’d look for a gifted school or consider moving him up a grade to challenge him.

My boy is just starting school, and I chose one that lets him run like a wild animal 3X day. Imho, boys need to burn off that energy before they can focus. Is your son getting enough physical exercise?
These are just early morning thoughts I’m throwing out there. I know in the end your son will do well. He’s got you backing him.


__________________________

"Trust, but verify."
 
Posts: 5284 | Registered: October 24, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of muddle_mann
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I have a dyslexic sister and I too am interested in only things that interest me. Big Grin I think the most important thing is to figure out how your son learns. How. That's important. When I got older I realized it's much easier to learn certain things certain ways. I had a friend how, literally, had the attention span of a gnat. He graduated with an Associates in Criminal Justice and a Bachelor's in network security. We were talking one day about the issues he was having. I suggested he type notes and then have the computer read them to him. That worked great! Don't be afraid to experiment.



Pissed off beats scared every time…

- Frank Castle
 
Posts: 3810 | Registered: March 03, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Little ray
of sunshine
Picture of jhe888
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Could well be that he is bored.

I went to a lot of schools because we moved a lot. Some were good, and some were not so good. I do well in school - studying and doing well on tests is something I am good at. But the not-so-good schools were where I did the worst. It was too easy, too far behind the work I could do.




The fish is mute, expressionless. The fish doesn't think because the fish knows everything.
 
Posts: 53118 | Location: Texas | Registered: February 10, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Leatherneck
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I see a lot of suggestions to put him in a gifted program or move him up a grade. Before I’d try that I’d want to know if he’s actually qualified for such a move first.

I’m no expert and every school system is different but around here you can’t just walk into the school and ask for either. Both my kids are in gifted programs and both had to test their way in and they are re-evaluated every grading period to ensure they still belong.

It’s possible that your kids problem isn’t a lack of challenge but that he is lazy. I was. I read at a high level because I liked to read. But everything else sucked because I was uninterested. Not uninterested because it wasn’t challenging enough, just flat out uninterested because I liked other stuff that wasn’t taught in school. My mind wondered a lot and I couldn’t focus on the work.

If his problem is the same then the only advice is to sit down, find out his real goals in life and map out a real path to get there. All I ever wanted was to join the Marines so I figured out what I needed to do to achieve that goal and focused on that.




“Everybody wants a Sig in the sheets but a Glock on the streets.” -bionic218 04-02-2014
 
Posts: 15249 | Location: Florida | Registered: May 07, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Do No Harm,
Do Know Harm
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We have a meeting with a psychologist scheduled, to determine what assessments to perform. We’ll go from there. I appreciate the push to set that up.




Knowing what one is talking about is widely admired but not strictly required here.

Although sometimes distracting, there is often a certain entertainment value to this easy standard.
-JALLEN

"All I need is a WAR ON DRUGS reference and I got myself a police thread BINGO." -jljones
 
Posts: 11446 | Location: NC | Registered: August 16, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Leatherneck
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Good call, and I wish you good luck. I’m very lucky that my kids don’t take after me.




“Everybody wants a Sig in the sheets but a Glock on the streets.” -bionic218 04-02-2014
 
Posts: 15249 | Location: Florida | Registered: May 07, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
We have a meeting with a psychologist scheduled, to determine what assessments to perform. We’ll go from there. I appreciate the push to set that up.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Glad to help. Keep us posted.
 
Posts: 17177 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Prepared for the Worst, Providing the Best
Picture of 92fstech
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My son is in 5th grade, and like yours, he's smart and quite capable...the trick is keeping him motivated. I got a letter from his teacher last week that he has failed three spelling tests in a row. Kudos to her for not waiting for the report card to notify us.

I have sat down with him every night the last two weeks and gone over his spelling with him. I have him write the words as I read them to him, then spell them out loud back to me. At first it was rough because he didn't want to do it, but we started making a game out of it. I started doing a pushup every time he spelled a word. And he has to do one every time he gets one wrong. He got really into it, and it made studying a lot easier. Last week he got a 95% on his spelling test. I just found out today that he got 100% on his mid-week quiz, so he won't even have to take the test on Friday this week.
 
Posts: 8419 | Location: In the Cornfields | Registered: May 25, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
We gonna get some
oojima in this house!
Picture of smithnsig
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Give him a Mountain Dew in the morning and keep track of it privately with his teachers. If a stimulant improves his attention and patience it’s usually ADD/ADHD. If his focus is more off or he becomes disruptive, it may not be.

Real deal ADD is a chemical imbalance.


-----------------------------------------------------------
TCB all the time...
 
Posts: 6501 | Location: Cantonment/Perdido Key, Florida | Registered: September 28, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I’ve never had anything against corporal punishment but an ass whipping for those grades? I’d still be walking funny.
It won’t work in this case believe me.
Take the child to see his doctor.
Eyesight, hearing, boredom, diet, stress. ADD/ADHD is it overdiagnosed? It sure is. Is it bullshit, not even close.
I wish you and your family the best.
 
Posts: 904 | Registered: July 14, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posting without pants
Picture of KevinCW
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Very hard to tell, without knowing him, you, his upbringing, his school, his teachers, the type of work, and the level of engagemen and his classmates.

But... this sounds a bit familiar to me.

I remember it clearly, it was 3rd grade.

I always did well in school except some times i got bad grades and had no idea why i got bad grades (cause i didn't pay attention and didn't follow instructions).

I got put in the remedial math class in 3rd grade for the first few months of the year.

looking back, i know why. We got a test, the "one test to define all tests" and place us in classes, slow, average, and advanced...

Of course, I didnt pay attention, didn't listen to directions, and did poorly on the test. So I got put in the slow kid class.

A month or two went on, and i not only did poorly, but continued to do poorly.... actually even worse.

At some point, I honestly don't know when, my mother, also a teacher (at a public school, not the private school i went to) met up with my teacher and they decided to give me another test.

I was moved from the remedial math class, to the advanced math class the next day.

It turned out I was bored, and stopped paying attention. My errors were that the directions and problems were overexplained and I stopped paying attention, and as such, missed things leading to errors.

After that 3rd grade day I went on to be at bare min level one grade ahead in mathametics, but by hischool, 2 grades ahead in math, and one of the higher students on the math team (yep, got all the girls with the math team angle) to the point of even getting a scholarship. I took all the college level classes for math in high school (and got credit) and didnt' even have to open a book in college for it. Same with Chemistry and American History... but those were later.

The point is, it COULD be that the class is going too slow, and that can be detrimental to a child's learning.

But it also could not be... YOU need to meet iwth the teachers ASAP and see if they will do some one on one testing to see which is the case.

Even if I am wrong and it isnt that he is gifted in some ways, and maybe he needs more help in some ways... GET IT DONE NOW so he can not fall behind.

Good luck.





Strive to live your life so when you wake up in the morning and your feet hit the floor, the devil says "Oh crap, he's up."
 
Posts: 33287 | Location: St. Louis MO | Registered: February 15, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Too clever by half
Picture of jigray3
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quote:
Originally posted by 46and2:
quote:
Originally posted by Holger Danske:
I'm going to go against the grain here and say, even if it's boredom, so what? The issue as described appears to be lack of focus, which is a skill that must be developed as any other.

Most of you may have been blessed in life never to be confronted with a job or tasks that bored you, but nonetheless must get done. Or that you were able to skip such a job or task. But I haven't been -- listening to static for hours on end is boring, but the off chance that a distress signal or even a routine message may come across requires one to stay focused. This was my training as a USCG radioman, back in the day when we still monitored the CW channels. And I'm sure anyone who has served in any branch has had similar instances where you were bored silly, but still had to retain focus.

So to merely dismiss the issue to boredom does a disservice. It may be an element and could be addressed (but OP stated a rural district (like the one I went to) that may not have resources). But the core issue of focus must be addressed, whether b/c of ADHD or other clinical issues or just the fact that shit can be boring, but you gotta focus.

This is certainly a valid point.

The ability to both focus on and successfully complete painfully boring and unchallenging tasks is a vital life skill, and it's definitely possible this is the problem the OP's son faces.

It's also true that many schools are so far down that hole and in so many ways that it goes well beyond what a normal need would be. It will be important to discern which one is happening here or whether or not it's something else entirely.

But Holger Danske is wise to bring up this point.


My wife worked for a startup that developed technology to help kids develop and improve their focus as a skill. It was aimed at kids with ADHD, but the technology could be applied to any child. It was a gaming system with a brain activity sensor. The response of the controller for the games and thus scoring improved as the child's focus improved as measured by the brain activity sensor. By merely playing the game, the kids learned how to turn their ability to focus on. Schools don't understand that focus is a skill that can be honed, or have a method for addressing it IMHO.




"We have a system that increasingly taxes work, and increasingly subsidizes non-work" - Milton Friedman
 
Posts: 10350 | Location: Richmond, VA | Registered: December 11, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
bigger government
= smaller citizen
Picture of Veeper
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quote:
Originally posted by chongosuerte:
There’s no divorce issue. All that is well past and both of us have remarried or are about to. All that is healthy.

I wonder about ADHD. And about boredom. He’s got glasses, and his hearing is good. He just doesn’t care.

He tested three grade levels behind on math. There is a significant deficiency there. But it’s his lack of attention to detail that leads to all of this.


(This is long... I hope it helps, but we're only one set of parents doing the best we can.)

chongo, while not identical, you're very closely describing my 5th grader. (He reads at a 10th grade level, and gets things very quickly but has trouble with the work, which is the repetition needed to lock it into his memory.) We worked very closely with his 3rd grade teacher when he started exhibiting many of the things you describe. While our strategies won't necessarily work for you, I can give you some of the tips and tricks we've started using - Keeping in mind that we're aware that this is a full-time job for us and we expect this to be something we have to be tuned in to, until he is finished with school or moves out, etc.

First and foremost, we worked with his pediatrician. It was obvious that my son has an attention deficit, but because of my own history with ADD, I was HUGELY skeptical and cautious. We love our pediatrician and he cut through the BS. He gave us a great history on ADD and where it was and where it is now. He talked about how kids, like mine, have sensory input issues that present as ADD, specifically in kids that aren't hyperactive. We ended up running a trial (for dosage and type) of some meds and even my son in 3rd grade commented on how it was so great that he felt like he could actually participate in the classroom.

We're still actively working this aspect though. He's growing so quickly and we want to stay closely invested in how he's dealing with it and whether it's still working, etc.

Secondly, we started to work harder on keeping a regular schedule that he could depend on. Like him, I have to have lists and regular schedules or my brain goes all over the place and I have a tendency to spin my wheels. We printed and planned out when homework and chores needed to happen. What bedtime looked like. He has a calendar so he can see the week in advance. Structure is a hugely awesome thing for him, because unstructured playtime, Legos, etc. is like a drug and he can lose hours at a time very easily. He has tons of play time still, and we're making sure he can be a kid, but nothing is willy-nilly as far as his time goes. It's a lot of work, but he's made incredible progress in his academics.

Third, and this was the tough one, was we pulled way back on screen time. This may not look like what you think though. He was only doing 1/2hr of screen after school (to "decompress") and then maybe baseball at night if I had it on, and then like on hour on Sat and maybe 1/2hr on Sunday. More if sports was on and he would sit down to watch with us/me.

We shifted (for all of his younger siblings as well) to no screen during the week, with the exception of a little baseball or hockey (if I was already planning to watch, and even then it's like an inning or two), and even then he's still in bed on time, so he has a chance to read. Every day, when the kids come home from school, they have a list of things to do: Unpack backpack, check the "check chore" (which includes things like garbage, recycling), check for their weekly chore (windows, vacuum, etc), pack a snack for the next school day, and practice their instrument. If they do these things well, without complaint, they earn 30m for the weekend. Then they have 2 hours to use as they please starting Friday after school. (Family movies don't count, sporting events don't count, etc.) This way if they want to do Minecraft for 2 hours they can, if they want to split it up, they can. etc etc.

Finally, sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep. We made huge strides in making sure that he was in bed with lights out so that he (at 10) is getting at LEAST 10hrs of sleep. Some nights that's not possible, but over the long haul, I would say the average is pretty close to 9:30/10hrs. It's made a huge difference. He gets up, is pleasant in the morning, has plenty of battery for the afternoon and evening activities. We're much more flexible in the summer, but during the school year things are much more rigid.

There are tons of other little things, and I'm sure I'm missing a lot, but these are some of the larger points.

Parenting is something else, I'll tell you what...




“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”—H.L. Mencken
 
Posts: 9144 | Location: West Michigan | Registered: April 20, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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